Word: comic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Steve Coogan, crafts intricately layered, well-observed, heartfelt plays in a realistic vein about contemporary relationships. McDonagh is more a folkwriter in the tradition of J.M. Synge. His macabre, wildly funny and over-the-top tragicomedies are slightly absurdist, set in remote parts of rural Ireland and peopled with comic grotesques--or literal grotesques, like the title character in Cripple, whom a young actor, Ruaidhri Conroy, plays with a convulsive total body limp of hideous and breathtaking precipitousness...
...Shall We Dance?" is a light-footed, sweet crowd-pleaser of a movie that's guaranteed to appeal as much to American audiences as it did to the Japanese. It's easy to see why: as entertainment, it pulls off just the right blend of the comic and the earnest, and dance movies have always had a certain charm, from Fred Astaire to "Strictly Ballroom." But what makes "Shall We Dance?" really interesting is its subtle illustration of the social-cultural fabric of its story, so different in crucial ways from that familiar to most Western viewers...
Though it doesn't quite match Ang Lee's wonderful gift for rendering social conventions hilarious, "Shall We Dance?" is bound to tickle the most staid viewer. It makes abundant, admittedly effective use of stock comic devices and characters. Eriko Watanabe cuts a droll figure as the experienced but caustic and somewhat unattractive dancer whom Sugiyama agrees to partner in an amateur competition; Naoto Takenaka hams it up as a painfully self-conscious colleague who dons a wig and hurls himself with fiendish gusto into the rhumba; Sugiyama's two fellow dance-pupils--one short and hyper...
Maher, a stand-up comic and the son of an NBC news editor, conceived the show as a nightly dream salon in which discourse on the day's events boiled but never simmered. Critics of PI have lamented that the show, like Crossfire or The McLaughlin Group, too often turns into a forum of white noise where few substantive ideas are presented. This seems akin to disliking Jenny McCarthy because she doesn't do Strindberg. Half hours of current-affairs television--especially those that feature Meat Loaf as a recurring guest--are not meant to leave us feeling as though...
...chuckle every time it appears. But after a while the gag gets old: one wishes the scriptwriters had given d'Onofrio something else to do besides walk like Frankenstein with a case of cerebral palsy and grunt threats in guttural tones. And the Bug, once it emerges, is a comic book nighmare. It's not any less ridiculous just because it's camp...